Around Maryland

Comptroller-elect Brooke Lierman (D) is announcing Monday the first major appointments of her senior leadership team as she prepares to take office on Jan. 16. Lierman has tapped Rianna P. Matthews-Brown to be her chief of staff, and said that Andrew Schaufele, a mainstay in the comptroller’s office for 13 years, will serve as chief deputy comptroller. Matthews-Brown is a veteran government manager who has also worked in the private sector, spending seven years at Johns Hopkins University, most recently as deputy chief of staff to President Ronald Daniels. She has also been director of university initiatives for Daniels and has also been part of the university’s government affairs team.

Carroll County Public Schools must submit a plan to the state in March for how the county will implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms, and discussions have begun on what that plan should contain. The 10-year, $3.8 billion plan has ambitious goals to help Maryland schools bridge achievement gaps among students of all backgrounds and produce graduates capable of competing globally. Among the 179-page plan’s many objectives is expanding and funding prekindergarten for all 4-year-olds and low-income 3-year-olds.

A controversy is now roiling a part of the Hampden neighborhood. A developer wants to level a secluded 1930 industrial property and replace it with a six-story apartment house, complete with parking and a swimming pool. Added to the drama is a stout brick chimney that once served the old clothing factory’s boiler. It’s a tall smokestack where thousands of migrating chimney swifts swoop and spend the night in the late summer and again in the spring. Come morning, they take off. The show the birds make is enough to draw dozens of human onlookers to take in this semiannual ornithological show. This smokestack has achieved a real following. The building, at 3110 Elm Ave., is known as the Free State Bookbinders, a business that started operating here in 1984 but shut down about a year ago.

The Parkway Theatre will go dark in early 2023, discontinuing screenings and other events in the renovated movie palace that is home to the Maryland Film Festival and which, according to financial documents obtained by The Sun, has been operating in the red. Struck hard like other arts organizations and businesses by the COVID pandemic, film festival officials said they are hitting the pause button to develop a new business plan and adjust to the current economic climate and “dramatic and continuing shifts” in the movie business and audiences.

More than 400 people spent Nov. 5 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards sampling some of the area’s best chili recipes as the event raised more than $77,000 to support The Baltimore Station, a residential and community-based treatment program supporting veterans and others transitioning from homelessness and substance use disorder to self-sufficiency.  Teams participating in the chili competition represented the area’s business and nonprofit community. Emerging as the judges’ pick for “Best Chili” was Mt. Hebron High School from Ellicott City for its “Viking Chili” and the Maryland Multi-Housing Association (MMHA) once again took home the “People’s Choice” award for its Godfather inspired chili “The Good Chili.” The “Best Booth” award went to Fuchs North America for its Harry Potter-themed booth.

During his fiscal year 2024 budget recommendation announcement Thursday, Gov. Larry Hogan today included $100 million in proposed funding for University of Maryland Shore Regional Health’s new Regional Medical Center at Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. “Building a new Regional Medical Center in Easton marks the most significant milestone in fulfilling our decades-long integrated facility and clinical service delivery plan,” said Ken Kozel, president and CEO of UM SRH. “Our growing communities expect and deserve access to a state-of-the-art center with advanced clinical care.”

The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore unveiled updated designs Thursday for the second phase of Rash Field Park’s expansion in the Inner Harbor. Rash Field’s overhaul has been a work in progress since 2015 when organizers decided to split the project into two phases to make fundraising easier. The first phase of the renovated park, once an uninviting concrete and sandy field, reopened in November 2021 with a new skate park, playground and pavilion. The second phase of the project will add five acres, including green space and a beach.